SEO: 5 Unorthodox Tangible Link Building Strategies

Let’s face it, if you’ve read as many link building posts as I have, you’re getting pretty sick of ’em. They all say the same things, and half of them don’t even apply to you, such as viral link building. Honestly, if your blog had the exposure to start building links virally just as easily as the posts say, chances are you wouldn’t be spending your time reading those posts on that half-mediocre SEO blog. So, for the rest of you who struggle with link building, wanting not to hear the same crap over & over again, this is for you (note: I’m saving my best for last).

Ranker.com

Ranker.com is a content hub where you create a list and rank all the items on it. It’s not exactly like Suite101 or Associated Content because all that is expected of you is a title, opening paragraph, and a list of items, give or take a description of each. So, what’s the difference in terms of link building? Time. It could take you 15-20 minutes to create a quality post on this site whereas it would take you upwards of 45 minutes on the two examples previously mentioned. You not only get a quality anchor text link at the top of the page right under the title, but you also start building authority in your niche. In reality, it’s a win-win.

Empirical Article Linking

Essentially, this technique is article marketing but with a twist. WHAT? I thought you said these were ‘unorthodox’ linking strategies? Yes, this is one, but hold on before you get skeptical. In a nutshell, this strategy involves interlinking all of your different submitted articles. For example, if I submit an article to The Free Library, instead of using all four backlinks to point back to my site, I might use one or two to point to other articles I’ve submitted, such as on Ezine Articles or GoArticles. What this does is increase the quality of your links on those sites. Here’s the best way to do it – use your best keywords on Ezines & GoArticles, and try and build up 10 links to each article. You’ll see some serious results if you do it right.Dofollow Blog Commenting (the right way)

Skeptics – hold on before you start criticizing again. This tactic involves commenting on blogs that don’t have a nofollow attribute on their comment links, so what you get in return for a comment is a quality link (not super high-quality, but it’s better than most comment links). First, you need a list to start off (My blog has a list of solely SEO & Internet marketing dofollow blogs). Then once you find a couple high page ranked & high quality blogs, you need the SEO Quake add-on for Mozilla Firefox. Once downloaded, you will be able to sort your search results in Google by different metrics. For this strategy, you will be sorting results based on page rank.

So, here’s what you do – type into Google “site:exampleblog.com” (replace ‘exampleblog.com’ with the blog you want to comment on). Then sort your results by Page Rank. I know it’s not a flawless tool, so you will still have to go page by page to find high PR posts, but you get the idea. Now what you have in front of you is gold – a list of high page rank blog posts you can easily comment on & get in on some of that link juice. Obviously, go for the high page ranked posts first, and move your way down. REMEMBER: contribute to the conversation; no one wants just another “great post!” comment, and chances are it won’t get approved.

.Edu Blog Commenting

Another form of blog commenting, but this time the strategy will net you a few .edu links. Yes, they will be nofollow links, but they will help build some trust. Here’s how to find the blogs to comment on:

Type this into Google: inurl:.edu inurl:comments/feed

What this query will do is get a list of results that have WordPress on a .edu domain. You will get around 2,000 results, so you’ll first have to find which blogs are approving comments on a regular basis, and which ones are higher authority. Since the results you are finding are comment feeds, by clicking on the results and looking for the date of the last accepted comment, you can get a good feel for which ones are currently approving.Using LinkChecker to Build High-quality Links

This is one of my top link building strategies in my arsenal. Let’s just say I’ve netted a few PR 5 blogroll links over the past couple weeks. Here’s how to do it – First download LinkChecker for Mozilla Firefox (another add-on?!). This tool will help you check pages for broken links by right clicking and choosing “Check Page Links”. Next, you will have to find medium-sized industry-related blogs that have large blogrolls. The easiest way to do this is to just find one, and then check all the blogs in their blogroll, which leads to more, and so on. Now, I say medium sized for a couple reasons. The first is that large-sized blogs rarely have broken links and probably don’t want to link to you for any reason, and the second is that smaller blogs are still good, but medium-sized blogs are obviously more valuable.

So here’s what you’ll be doing: Find these blogs, check their page links for broken links, and once you find a couple, you’re in. Find a contact email, create an email titled “Broken Links” or “Broken Links on Blog”, and say something like this:

Hi!

I was on your blog when I came across a few broken links that I thought you should check out. I know you’ve got a lot on your plate with the blog and all, so I listed them:

*Broken Link*Broken Link*Broken Link

Broken links are never a positive sign for a blog, so I hope this helps. Also, do you think you could replace one of the broken links with a link to my blog? It’s myblog.com.

Cheers

*Your name*

Bam. Doing this ten times will usually get you 2-3 responses, and usually one or two say yes. Notice that the broken links are usually found in their blogroll (hence finding blogs with large blogrolls), so they’re more willing to replace a bad link with a link to you if it’s already external. And yeah – I got some serious link value from this strategy.

I know I went over some of these strategies briefly, so if you’d like, my blog features posts on each of these topics that are more in depth. I’m not trying to be promotional, just helpful!

So, what do you think? Did you find any possible faults in any of these strategies? Please let me know in the comments! I’m dying to hear what you guys have to say. And remember – don’t forget to share/tweet this article! It makes a huge difference :).About The AuthorJon Cooper is an SEO consultant who specializes in link building. Jon has over 2 years of experience as a link builder, and has been blogging about his daily linking strategies since March of this year. Check out his Link Building Blog with posts such as his dofollow blogs list and don’t be afraid to send him an email at jcooper@pointblankseo.com or subscribe to his RSS.